The former Prime Minister Tony "no sniping, no undermining" Abbott has just celebrated his 20th month of sniping and undermining the current PM. And, amid this latest round of scheming, only Queensland backbencher Warren Entsch has publicly suggested that maybe, just maybe, it would be better for the former leader to leave Parliament altogether if he's not prepared to either give his sage counsel privately or, better yet, shut the hell up.
But let's focus on what's apparently the biggest issue here: that, as a former prime minister, Tony Abbott has the absolute right to destroy the Coalition government.
![Abbott's now infamous 2014 budget horror show was so manifestly unfair it has fundamentally altered the national ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170713063326im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/2/k/5/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvmozt.png/1496027239631.jpg)
It's weird that he wants to, of course, and you might think it's a stupid and self-defeating goal – but apparently the only issue under consideration is his right to an opinion.
On Monday Abbott had a little public holiday media blitz, publishing an opinion piece about where the government he used to lead is going wrong and also having a chat with new best pal Ray Hadley on 2GB.
During these media forays, he made a series of policy statements notable for being doomed (declaring a war against "political correctness", including abolishing the Human Rights Commission), straight-up dangerous (joining the call to let young people push up house prices by using their superannuation to buy property) or just plan waffle (oh, you'd like to make it "easier for future generations to get work"? Great idea! Say, why has no one ever thought of that before?).
You'd think one or two of Abbott's colleagues might say something along the lines of "as a member of the Liberal Party and a person in the actual Parliament we hold by a one-seat majority and with a make-or-break budget coming up upon which our entire electoral fortunes are likely to rest, how about you shut your advice-hole in public for a couple of weeks?"
Nationals senator and Resources Minister Matt Canavan told the ABC he "completely accepted Tony's right to comment on these matters".
Trade Minister Steve Ciobo shrugged that "Every backbencher has a right to put in their view, that's exactly how our system works. I encourage every backbencher to keep contributing to the arsenal of policy ideas that the Coalition government has."
And Senator James Paterson declared "Truth is, Tony is a backbencher and like any backbencher he is free to make the case for his ideas as often as he likes and however he likes," on Sky News.
These statements appears to miss the point by a fairly large distance.
See, no one's suggesting Abbott doesn't have the right to say this stuff. They're pointing out how terribly stupid it is that he's doing so, and wondering why the party apparently isn't trying to protect themselves from this avoidable damage.
And that's the government's problem in a nutshell: they're so obsessed with insisting that any question or criticism is actually some form of attempted censorship that they apparently no longer notice when something is stupid, much less genuinely dangerous when the party he represents is struggling in both the polls and the parliament.
It's weird that Abbott should be so opposed to giving his advice in private, because he's perfectly happy to demand that others do so. For example, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.
Cormann, as Abbott tells it, had disloyally criticised an earlier outburst from Abbott in public rather than squaring up to him in private like a man - but Abbott sorted him out.
"Mathias and I had a man-to-man talk you might say about that particular outburst of his," he told Hadley in public on the radio and not one-on-one in private the way he supposedly prefers. "We had a very blunt conversation about it."
There's something deeply pathetic in watching Abbott tut tut about politicians playing "Canberra insider games" as though he's not a Canberra insider himself. Indeed, he sounds exactly as convincing as ex-politicians-turned-media-figures like Ross Cameron and Mark Latham pretending to be rebellious self-made (ahem) "outsiders" as they still merrily collect a parliamentary pension.
But it's not merely ridiculous: it means the Turnbull government's wounds are probably fatal.
When the question becomes "does Tony Abbott want to be PM again, or is he just trying to get revenge on Malcolm Turnbull?" as though that's a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to ask about the people tasked with running the country, matters are probably beyond repair.
Maybe Turnbull should just hand the leadership over and resign, John Gorton-style. If Abbott's determined to drive the government off a cliff, there's no point agreeing to remain as his chauffeur.
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